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The free site makes it easy to share files, such as photos and videos, but Orange County uses it for government business.

The lawsuit claims it's being misused and that certain records are being secretly viewed and destroyed.

"The accusations that have been levied, that I am aware of, against Orange County are totally false," said Orange County Mayor Teresa Jacobs.

Jacobs promises to fight the suit filed by the citizen group Organize Now.

The suit claims the mayor and county violated public records law by deleting documents and redacting or removing file information that could potentially identify non-county employees with access to the Dropbox.

Stephanie Porta, from Organize Now, said the suit was filed after she said it appeared some information from public records requests were missing.

"It looks like people were ordered to delete information in the Dropbox, as well as 18 users and 18 different devices," she said.

"I have 100 percent confidence that we will win this case, and we will win it quickly, because there is no basis for these accusations," said Jacobs.

After a WESH 2 News investigation first revealed the county's use of Dropbox, the mayor's staff provided a Dropbox "log" dating back to January 2013,

The head of IT told WESH 2 News that deleted files are retained in a permanent archive and retrieved during public records requests. Some files are shared with non-county employees, but none are given password access. IP addresses are redacted, he said.

That means there's no electronic trail indicating which people used what devices to access Dropbox.

The mayor's staff said state law protects that kind of information from being released.

Organize Now wants a court to sort out the dispute, asking for an emergency hearing to compel the county to produce allegedly missing records and prevent deletion of present and future records.

The First Amendment Foundation is concerned about the growing numbers of cities and counties that use file-sharing systems like Dropbox, Google Drive and Microsoft's OneDrive because it's difficult to tell who has access to documents.